Finished Kiddie Spot, Almost Walking and the Best Family Portrait Ever!

As promised, here are some pictures of the completed kiddie heaven. Bapa and Dendi came over again on the weekend and Scott and Tom built benches for the sandbox. They also figured out a way to cover the sandbox so that Kodi and friends didn't discover the best and biggest kitty box ever. The great thing about the newest outdoor area is that it can keep us outside for hours. When Eli gets tired of mowing, throwing his frisbee, playing in the sand or rocks, he brought out some color by numbers to work on. Awesome. Also, here's a picture of our container garden on our deck.



As the title suggests, Keira is almost walking. She started by clinging to us with two hands and learning to take steps. She loves this kind of guided walking.
This picture was taken at the end of March, notice how she's holding her mouth as she concentrates.


Now, she's nearly obsessed with walking. She wants to be up as much as possible, pushing her walking toys or holding on to our fingers. When she's holding on to two fingers she plows ahead, almost falling as she's trying to run. She's getting really good holding one finger, too. Although she still gets off balance or tangled up when she rushes. Look in the background of the pictures of Keira pushing her doggie and you can see my aircast. I got my walking cast off last week and I upgraded to an aircast. I was hoping in vane to go from walking cast to cute springy sandals. But, no such luck.



Keira seems to be turning into a little person more and more each day. She's getting quite opinionated and her temper's starting to show. I think she may be a challenging younger toddler whereas Eli didn't really show his toddler colors until he was 3. She tries saying all sorts of words now like water or water bottle (wah-wah), ball (baw), hi (eye) and many others if we talk slowly and enunciate.

She's also starting to eat a little bit now. With each meal I put a little something on her tray and give her a spoon. She dips her spoon and fingers into the food, licks her spoon and fingers and goes through the motions of eating by saying, "mmmm" and chewing. We're getting there. :)

She still loves music. One of her favorite toys are musical cards. We have quite a few of them from multiple occasions all around the house for her. Her two favorite right now play a Kiss song and the Chicken Dance. She opens and closes them and rocks back and forth as the music plays. She also loves it when we sing to her. Her two favorite songs that I sing are "Bingo" and "Old MacDonald". She requests them on the golf cart by either saying "ae, ee, ie, ie, ie" for "Bingo" or "Ee Ie Ee Ie Oooooooe" for "Old MacDonald." About a month ago, "Bingo" mutated into "Keira" as I now sing,...

"There was a Mama had a girl and Keira was her name-o"
"K - E - I - R - A."

She loves it. On long golf cart rides, I often end up singing about the whole family. This has coincidentally taught Eli how to spell Keira, Mommy, and Daddy, as he already knows how to spell his own name.

Continuing to move onto Eli anecdotes... he continues to say things that amaze me, and he definitely seems to have inherited Daddy's math brain. About a month ago, he asked me if I would count to one thousand. I told him I probably wouldn't since it would take so long. He said in a slightly exasperated tone, "Mommy, a thousand only has ten hundreds!" I have no idea where he got that. But, I guess someone must have told him at some point...

Then just yesterday he stumped me with a math question that I had to ask Scott to explain to him. I know the "rule" but I wasn't sure how to explain it correctly. We were talking about how much time was left for "quiet time". Every day he has an hour of quiet time in his room where he plays by himself and within that hour he has to lay down and try to nap for ten minutes. Lately, he falls asleep about every other day. Yesterday was his birthday and he was way to excited to sleep. So, we were counting down the time on his digital clock. It was 2:10, and his quiet time was over at 2:13. We were talking about how many minutes were left and he said two, I corrected him and said, that there were actually three. After quiet time he said that he didn't understand because there should be just two minutes left since he doesn't stay in his room for the 2:13 minute. He didn't like my attempt at an explanation and only seemed satisfied when Scott told him that you are actually counting the spaces between minutes. Good thing him and Scottie speak the same language!

Besides numbers, and crazy math questions, Eli continues to love color by numbers, crafts, puzzles and mazes. But, he doesn't have much interest in drawing. I think it's because he knows how things "should" look and he can't draw it that way. I'm trying to loosen him up about it and I LOVE the few drawings that he has done for me. Most recently, he drew the best family portrait picture. He was working on a workbook at Dendi's house and she insisted that he bring the page home to me as she knew that I'd love it. He drew it all himself and then explained it to her so that she could label it. I think it may be one of my favorite things he's ever created.